May 3, Saturday, Irkutsk to Listyvanka (Lake Baikal) We get up early 7am to search for coffee. It's a brisk and cold morning and my sinuses are acting up I believe due to the dust. Irkutsk is very dusty. Anyhow, I tough it out and we find a very chi-chi hotel and have blinis and a latte which is way too sweet( I still have not learned that tea i...

Ivan and Katja met us at the train station with welcomed Gecko shirts and a nice fancy sign. We were so excited to see them before we even got off the train! They loaded us into two minivans and we were off to Listvyanka which was about an hours drive from Irkutsk on lake Baikal. We stayed at a great little guesthouse which fed us WONDERFUL brea...

We were woken just after 6am by the cabin attendants as our train neared the station in Irkutsk. Everyone hurriedly begun packing their bags to ensure neither they nor their belongings were not left behind on the train. The packing wasn't made any easier by the Mongolian vodka and the beers that were consumed the night before. On the platform we...

Nothing against the place but Irkutsk is a bit of a shanty town. I think the townships back home look and feel better than that place......It just felt edgy? Anyway onto brighter things, today we went on a day trip to Lake Baikal, the largest fresh water lake in the world. Its a massive body of water and we had a beautiful but crisp sunny day to...

From the heady depths and fridge/freezer like temperatures of Olkhon Island, we decided to give the Lake Bikal experience a further chance. The town of Litvanskya is known (apparently) as the playground of the Siberian novo rich. I think my junior school playground was bigger (and certainly warmer!). It is a town situated further South than Olkh...

Days 38-41 Listvyanka, Lake Baikal, the worlds largest (by Volume) and deepest freshwater lake. It's remote location has spared it ,much of the pollution that blights other former Soviet area's I had visited like the Corunian Spit lagoon. It is home to hundreds of indigenous species that are found nowhere else in the world. The town we are stayi...

T: Anna, Eric, and I decided to go for a day trip to Listvyanka, small fishing village that sits on shore of the Baikal Lake, 50 min. drive from Irkutsk. For the first time, we encountered the beauty of the lake, here with the snow-capped mountains in the background. On the local market, we bought a smoked omul (fish from Baikal), which was so d...

We were awoken bright and early, not by cannon fire this time, but by the sedate ringing of our alarm clock. Our guide for the day, Anna S, arrived right on schedule and away we went to see the sights around the local area. We first headed to the Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture where they have a collection of old wooden Siberian houses, bar...

FYI, check out joe and mel's blog/photo site & of Alex is getting lost group on facebook for the otherside of the trans-sib stories.. So a day of dry suit diving in the largest lake in the world, what could be more fun! It's been awhile since I last dived, so I decided to dragged along my "go dive" book to revise a little on the train. Altho...

3 nights on the famous Rossiya Trans Siberian Train get us to Irkutsk, where we meet a minibus for the short drive to Lake Baikal